Sunday, October 11, 2009

First Dropback at the wall

I love A’s classes. She included hanumanasana and samakonasana in the prasaritas, and some preparatory quad and hip flexor openers, along with shoulder/armpit/rib(?) openers. Then we did intermediate up to laghu vajrasana, which she let us try several times…she had me lean back holding higher on my calves, around my knee crease, which felt better to me than ankles, given my current struggle…once I was down she helped me hook my hand around my thigh. I’m certain I wouldn’t have been able to do this without her help. And then she assisted when I came back up. The high-calf, knee-grab is something that helps with my steepness issue, which in theory should help me come back up. I’m not sure if this is acceptable traditionally (not that I care much one way or another but it wouldn’t fly in J’s room, so practice opportunities for this are limited to home). I found that I needed less help to come up this way. The normal assist I need is someone grabbing my hips and hauling me up. A intervened more on the way down than up, helping me maintain the steepness and then on the way up she got involved only until she could see my own equilibrium would take me the rest of the way. (I love conservative, decreasing adjustments by the way…adjustments where you do most of the work).

She gave us a viparita dandasana prep at the wall (sirsasana, then one leg to wall, both legs to wall, lift head, lower head, walk one leg down, back up, walk other down, back up, both down at once using the wall as a guide). We spent a lot of time on this one and it was fun!

Then drop backs and UD to standing….I dropped back for the first time at the wall. I’d come up at the wall but never dropped back before. It was great!!